Ben said preemptively, “I’m not dancing, that’s my line in the sand.”
“I will not ask you to dance, I promise,” I said.
Suddenly, his chin tipped up, his nose flaring. His brow furrowed, and a tension tightened his shoulders. An intrusive smell caught his attention. I took a breath to find the scent he’d spotted. A body moving into the ballroom. Chilled, corpse-like but not rotting, cold with death but still alive. A vampire.
We both turned to the man who had just entered the ballroom. Svelte, wearing a dark shirt and gray slacks, casual and stylish, his hair slicked back. Everyone was eyeing him. He looked good. Of course he did, it was how vampires attracted prey. I gasped and slapped my hand over my mouth, astonished, because it finally clicked and I recognized him.
Jesse Kramer, my high-school sweetheart, broke-up-at-prom-drama ex-boyfriend, was a vampire.
Across the room, he met my gaze. And I let him, and I think Sarah McLachlan came up on the set list right that moment. For just a moment, he looked into my eyes with his vampiric, mesmerizing stare, and I was frozen—
“Oh my God, he’s actually here,” Sadie exclaimed.
I shut my eyes and shook my head to clear it. Had Jesse actually tried his vampiric hypnotism on me? The bastard . . .
“There he is,” Trevor murmured and stalked toward him. Jesse spotted him. His eyes widened, and he turned and walked out.
“Wait a minute—” I ran after Trevor.
“What—” Sadie ran after me. I assumed Ben followed as well.
In a foot race between a vampire and a mortal human, I’d put money on the vampire every time. Trevor must have known he couldn’t win a straight-up race, so in the ballroom lobby he veered to a side door while Jesse charged out the front. I kept after Jesse.
“Jesse, get back here, you jerk!” I shouted.
This was almost exactly what had happened at senior prom, which made me even more furious. You cannot escape the past, you can only repeat it. I pounded out the doors to the lighted nighttime parking lot and caught him just about to round the corner of the building. Wolf loved this. This was a chase. We had him in our sights. Next was the pounce, the grabbing him by the throat, the ripping—
No. I just wanted to talk.
“Jesse!” I yelled, and it must have come out partly like a growl, because he pulled up short. Slowly, he turned around.
Jesse couldn’t have been a vampire for more than a couple of years—he looked to be in his mid-twenties. Now, if this had been the twentieth reunion, there’d have been questions about how well preserved he appeared.
Still, I had a lot of questions.
“Hey, Kitty.” He scuffed his foot, tried to smile.
I had to take a moment to slow my breathing down so I didn’t, like, freak out and sprout fur. A reunion to remember.
“What . . . what is this?” I gestured vaguely at him, his condition, unable to formulate a concise question to take it all in. “Although this is pretty much the first time I’ve met a vampire and known exactly how old he is.”
“Good to see you, too,” he said, chuckling.
That moment, Trevor came around from the other side of the building, aiming a handheld crossbow loaded with a wooden bolt. Without thinking, I sprang, getting between Trevor and his target. I ended up pushing my ex-boyfriend into the wall, covering him with my body. A wooden stake would barely scratch me.
“Kitty, get out of the way!” Trevor ordered.
That was the moment Ben jogged up with Sadie and saw me and Jesse locked together.
“This must be the famous Jesse,” Ben said evenly.
Great. Just great. “Trevor, put that thing down!” I said. He didn’t. I bared my teeth. “Trevor!”
He lowered the crossbow. Jesse relaxed, just a bit.
“Put it on the ground, now!” I said. He did. I stepped away from the wall, straightened my dress. I was blushing. I resisted an urge to pour out apologies to Ben. This isn’t what it looks like . . . I trusted he knew that.
“What the hell is going on?” Sadie demanded, her voice edging into panic.
I looked back and forth between the two men, the vampire and the apparently professional vampire hunter. “What are the odds, really?” I muttered. “Trevor. Why are you trying to kill Jesse? I mean, is this something you make a habit of, killing vampires? And Jesse . . . why the hell are you a vampire!”
“You’re a vampire?” Sadie said, taking a step back.
“Who is that?” Jesse said, pointing at Ben. “I don’t remember you.”
“We’ve never met. Hi, I’m Ben, I’m Kitty’s husband.” He stepped forward, offered his hand and, a slave to social conventions, Jesse shook it. Ben appeared to squeeze extra hard.
“Husband?” Jesse said. “Oh. And you’re a werewolf too. I guess that makes sense.”
Sadie stared at Ben. “You are?”
“We don’t make a thing of it,” Ben said.
I pointed at Jesse and Trevor. “I need you two to answer my questions.”
“You first,” Trevor said.
“No,” Jesse stated. So I glared back at Trevor.
Trevor said, “It isn’t personal. Jesse crossed some bad people. I took the contract on the off chance he might be here. And I was right.”
“You can’t murder people at the class reunion!” I yelled.
“Is it murder if it isn’t human?” Trevor said, leering.
“Oh my God, are we really going to have that conversation?”
Jesse backed away. “Kitty, this is between the two of us, you should probably get out of here—”
“You have silver bullets in that gun?” I asked Trevor.
“Oh my God, you have a gun?” Sadie demanded.
Ben was at Sadie’s side. “Sadie, you’d probably better get back inside—”
“No! These are my friends. At least I thought they were.”
And didn’t that break my heart just a little. Meanwhile, Ben had his phone out and was talking to someone, walking just far enough off that I couldn’t hear.
“Well, Trev?” I asked.
“Um.”
“So that’s yes, you do have silver bullets.” Along with the visceral jolt of panic, I was offended and furious. “Were you planning on killing me too?”
“Only if you try to stop me.”
“Here I was thinking how this isn’t at all like class reunions in the movies and you have to go pull some Grosse Pointe Blank shit!”
“I wasn’t trying to pull some Grosse Pointe Blank shit, it just happened,” Trevor said.
“Shit like this doesn’t just happen,” I muttered.
Sadie said, “Maybe if we all went back inside and had a drink—”
“I don’t think you want that,” Jesse said, grinning.
I covered my face with my hands. This was too much.
“So. Um,” Jesse said, sticking his hands in his pockets and losing all his vampire suave. “It’s good to see you guys. Really.”
“I didn’t think you’d actually be here,” Trevor said.
“So, if you hadn’t been trying to kill Jesse, you wouldn’t be here?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted.